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he subsequently occupied at the Bar, should be engaged as my counsel. But it was thought advisable, in view of the feeling which had been evoked among the officials, that an England-returned Bengalee barrister. should not defend an England-returned Bengalee Civilian.

The Commissioners found me guilty of the charges, but they made no recommendation. I returned to Calcutta from Sylhet and obtained a copy of the report, without, however, the recommendations of the Government of India, which, as I subsequently found, were for my dismissal from the Service with a compassionate allowance of Rs. 50 a month.

My case excited very strong feeling in the Indian community, and the general belief amongst my countrymen was that, if I were not an Indian, I would not have been put to all this trouble, and that the head and front of my offence was that I had entered the sacred preserves of the Indian Civil Service, which so far had been jealously guarded against invasion by the children of the soil. Many years afterwards a Lieutenant-Governor told me that it was a wicked proceeding. Sir Edward Baker, another Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, who knew me well, said in a conversation with Mr. Gokhale, which was repeated to me by the latter: ‘I have a soft corner in my heart for Surendranath. We have done him a grievous wrong; but he bears no malice.’ Mr. Hume, the father of the Indian National Congress, writing in India in 1893, uses language which reflects the feeling of educated India.^[1]

It is worthy of notice that in 1882, eight years after my dismissal, I was appointed an Honorary Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta and a Justice of the Peace invested with power of imprisonment extending to two years, and of inflicting fines which might amount to one thousand rupees. Evidently those who trusted me with these pienary powers (and they are the highest which a magistrate under the Indian Law can exercise) thought that either I was innocent of the charges upon which I had been removed from the Indian Civil Service, or that I had outgrown my former self and changed my character within the brief period of eight years. I leave it to the reader to judge which of the two inferences is the more rational.

I may here add (though I am anticipating events by several

years) that under the rules for the election of members to the